A self-described "scream looking for a mouth," Hubert Selby, Jr., is the literary godfather of the inner demon. The mention of his name is like a password into the grimy clubhouse of his fans, which include Richard Price, Gilbert Sorrentino, and Henry Rollins. While he ranks high on their shortlist of creative genius-heroes, Selby's writing, when published, is exalted by few and never read by most. He is probably best recognized for his 1964 book Last Exit to Brooklyn, and its 1989 big screen adaptation. Once again, his work has been cinematically rendered -- this time by Pi director Darren Aronofsky -- in the upcoming Requiem for a Dream.

Requiem is an emotional horror story of addiction (to heroin, diet pills, television, and pride) set in the Bronx, where Jewish mothers and junkies shakily call each other family -- literally. Selby describes Requiem as a tale of "the obsessions of the mind"; as in all of his novels (additionally, 1971's The Room and 1998's The Willow Tree) it's as though Selby has singled out the ids of New York's most tortured souls and is taking dictation. No asphalt is too filthy for his stereoscopic magnifying glass, no inner torment too appalling.

Selby's personal history reads like the cursed background of one of his characters. A Brooklyn boy ("trough and trough"), young Hubert ("Cubby" to his friends) quit tenth grade in 1941 to become a merchant marine. At fifteen he escaped Bay Ridge for the open sea. The price for his maritime adventures was tuberculosis, and Selby's late teens and early twenties were spent in hospital beds as ten ribs were gradually removed from his dying young body. He lost a lung-and-a-half, and was given another death sentence when he returned to the hospital with asthma a few years later.

Selby pulled through again, this time arriving home from the ward with a premonition that he would survive his illnesses but regret his entire life at its eventual end. Selby saw writing as the single action that would rectify his survival. After six years at his Remington typewriter, Last Exit was born. Selby achieved instant notoriety for his brutal tales of Brooklyn -- the book was banned in Italy and was the subject of an obscenity trial in England.

But the attention was brief and bittersweet. Selby blew his sudden fame and fortune on booze and smack, and spent the next few years in psych wards (for attempted suicide) and jail cells (for heroin possession). He fled to Los Angeles, where he has spent the past thirty years living off government checks and odd jobs, pumping gas while his work is dissected in nearby ivory towers. He has been denied every grant for which he has applied. And though he is now teaching writing at USC, he says he doesn't have a single publisher interested in his newest work, a story about a suicidal man-cum-social vigilante.

With such a biography, you'd expect Selby to be gruff on the phone. But when I recently rang him up at his Hollywood apartment, a sweet and enthusiastic voice met me on the line. Easy with a laugh, exceedingly generous with his time and stories, Selby has uncannily survived a devastating life with warmth and a deep sense of humanity.

--Lauren Sandler